Crime and PUNISHMENT

A crim­i­nal of­fence, or a crime, is a type of wrong­do­ing that of­fends against not just a spe­cific vic­tim, but also so­ci­ety as a whole. Rob­bery, for ex­am­ple, is a crime be­cause not only has the vic­tim been force­fully de­prived of their prop­erty, but be­cause so­ci­ety will not tol­er­ate vi­o­lent theft. As crim­i­nal be­hav­iour af­fects the whole of so­ci­ety, it is the role of a pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor to charge and pros­e­cute the al­leged of­fender and bring jus­tice to the vic­tim and so­ci­ety.

The de­scrip­tion above is a para­phrased de­f­i­n­i­tion of crim­i­nal be­hav­iour that I found on the web­site of a lawyers’ as­so­ci­a­tion. I looked it up be­cause I wanted to be sure about what a crime ac­tu­ally is after read­ing the in­ter­view we pub­lish this month with the rap­per Valtònyc (pages 22 to 25). The 26-year-old singer from Mal­lorca talks about his cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in exile in Bel­gium, where he is fac­ing ex­tra­di­tion to Spain to serve three and a half years in prison for such of­fences as glo­ri­fy­ing ter­ror­ism and slan­der­ing the Crown in his songs.

I’m no lawyer, and I have no doubt that I’m clearly out of my depth when it comes to com­ment­ing on legal pro­ce­dures of which I have lit­tle ex­pe­ri­ence or un­der­stand­ing. How­ever, look­ing at Valtònyc’s case and read­ing his words, I must say that I’m hard-pushed to see where the crimes he was con­victed for are. The rap­per said some rather un­pleas­ant things in his songs — which in the in­ter­view he him­self says was “non­sense” spouted by an 18-year-old — and is now being pur­sued by the Span­ish ju­di­ciary, which wants to lock him up in prison.

Ac­cord­ing to our de­f­i­n­i­tion of a crime above, crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing must in­clude be­hav­iour that not only of­fends against a vic­tim, but against so­ci­ety as a whole. While as a cyn­i­cal 52-year-old man I’m sure I would ab­solutely hate Valtònyc’s songs, what of­fends me far more as a mem­ber of so­ci­ety is that the au­thor­i­ties in the coun­try I live in, and in which I’m bring­ing up my chil­dren, are will­ing to put peo­ple in prison for years be­cause they said some­thing they don’t like, and what’s more in the con­text of a song.

The court in Bel­gium deal­ing with Valtònyc’s ex­tra­di­tion case ini­tially threw out the re­quest on the grounds that it is a free­dom of speech issue. Damn right it is. I pre­sume we all want to live in a so­ci­ety that is as free as pos­si­ble, and I don’t see many peo­ple around me des­per­ately try­ing to em­i­grate to places like China or Burma. In fact, I see the re­sponse of the Span­ish au­thor­i­ties as far more threat­en­ing to so­ci­ety than some stu­pid songs I can just ig­nore if I want. And being a tight­wad, nor do I ap­pre­ci­ate the au­thor­i­ties wast­ing pub­lic re­sources that come out of my wages every month on pur­su­ing some kid who wrote some daft songs that don’t mean any­thing. I can go out today and buy Hitler’s Mein Kampf, for god’s sake, and that would be per­fectly legal, even though the book pro­motes the ex­ter­mi­na­tion of an en­tire peo­ple.

Be­cause of the whole in­de­pen­dence issue, we are con­stantly being told how Spain is a full democ­racy and an ad­vanced so­ci­ety that has earned its place among the com­mu­nity of states that re­spect and up­hold human rights and basic lib­eral prin­ci­ples like free­dom of ex­pres­sion. Yet, talk­ing the talk is easy, and words – as Valtònyc would no doubt point out – are just words. What I imag­ine we would all like to see is the state to which we have de­volved so much of our power and wealth also walk­ing the walk.